The Biogeochemistry with Light, Iron, Nutrients and Gases model provides an intermediate level of complexity for marine biogeochemistry.
BLING is fully prognostic, being determined only by the physical environment of an ocean GCM.
It includes a representation of iron and light co-limitation, as well as macronutrient limitation, and accounts for mixed layer dynamics, ecosystem structure, dissolved organic matter, and variable export fractions. It also predicts chlorophyll concentrations, useful for calculating shortwave penetration.
Yet, it circumvents explicit ecosystem components, handling all living pools (and sinking particles) implicitly. As a result, it requires very few prognostic tracers.
This provides a reasonably realistic simulation of ocean biogeochemistry while minimizing cost, code, and complexity. It also provides a platform on which idealized diagnostic and isotope tracers can be easily and efficiently implemented.
BLING is designed with multiple sub-packages to provide additional functionality. However, all configurations of a given version share the same core behaviour. The additional packages currently available include: carbon, carbon components (preformed and saturation), radiocarbon, nutrient source tags, and preformed phosphate. More functionality is on the way.
BLING was written in FORTRAN90, for use in the GFDL ocean models (MOM4p1 and GOLD).
News:
miniBLINGv0 is now running in a global 1/10 degree model, with just 1 required prognostic tracer!
BLINGv1 is under development.
BLINGv0 is publicly available as part of mom5, available from mom-ocean.
The documentation paper for BLING.v0 is available online, here:
http://www.biogeosciences.net/7/1043/2010/bg-7-1043-2010.pdf
About this website:
The idea is to provide an easily-updated resource describing recent developments with the model, archiving prior versions, linking to documentation, and giving support for users. If you are using BLING, please feel free to contribute to this site! Just contact Eric Galbraith (eric.galbraith@mcgill.ca) for access.
Model diagnostics